Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines
by Vivian Bloodmark
Summary: Everyone knows that Abby has a bit of a crush on her hero, and that's as far it's ever supposed to go, but troubled and stoic Special Agent Gibbs is vulnerable to any kind of love.
1. Dislocated

**Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines**

By Vivian Bloodmark

Author's note: This story will be updated in short chapters, and there will be many of them. I'm pretty competently literate, but I'm visually impaired and writing in long stretches gives me terrible headaches, so in the interest of frequent updates, chapters will likely be brief. Thanks for bearing with me!

**Chapter One – **Dislocated

Abby slammed the door behind her as she strode determinedly into Doctor Mallard's lab, only to find the Doctor himself staring around at the various cluttered surfaces in fascinated bemusement. Palmer, who was crouched underneath one of the autopsy tables, jumped when he heard the door slam, banged his head, and began rubbing it ruefully.

"Ah, Abigail!" Ducky sounded pleased. "You're just in time. Mr. Palmer and I were just attempting to relocate a misplaced femur. Care to join us? We could desperately use another pair of eyes…"

"Um." Abby eyed the body, which was laid out peacefully on the autopsy table. "Whose femur?"

"John Doe," announced Palmer, resurfacing and coming to join them. "Looks like an overdose."

"But to be sure," added Ducky, "we'll need those tox screens. I don't suppose you've come to tell me the good news…"

"No." Abby shook her head vigorously, dragging her eyes away from the femur-less corpse. "No, Ducky, I gotta ask you something important."

"Ah," Ducky murmured, "Yes, I had a feeling it was something of that sort."

"See, that's funny, because that's why I'm here!" Abby pulled a chair over and perched on it. "I had a feeling…I mean, I have a feeling. About Gibbs. Something's wrong with Gibbs."

"Yes." Ducky nodded distractedly, scanning the floor as he walked around the table searching for missing bits of skeletal structure. "I've often thought the same thing."

"Ducky, I'm serious." Abby bounced off the chair and began to pace the floor, ticking off points on her fingers. "He's been distracted all day, he stares off into space, he's really gruff and abrasive-!"

"He's…usually pretty gruff," interjected Palmer.

Abby glared at him. "More gruff. And he's sharp with me. I'm used to him being impatient, but Gibbs understands me, he gets how I work. He's never sharp or irritable with me, especially when he knows I'm working on something good. Today, he came down to the lab, and he was really not happy to see me. Me! I'm not just blowing off steam, I think he's really…you know, troubled."

Ducky sighed. "Abigail, Jethro has more going on in his head then you, or I, or any of us really have any desire or right to know about. I appreciate your concern, and I'm sure he does, but the fact that he's acting a bit…well, a bit off color today is no doubt something he'd rather you and I did not openly notice. For all we know, he could have had a cold shower this morning, or some of those aches and pains that begin to creep up on you when you start to get on into your later years. Jethro is not the young man he thinks he is, and believe me, aging is uncomfortable, even for the stoic."

Abby was unconvinced. In her head, she ran through all the encounters she'd had with Gibbs that day. She remembered the way he'd failed to notice Ziva in the hallway, so that they almost collided, and the way that he hadn't even said good morning to either her or Ducky when he'd come in to Abby's lab to intercept the latest findings. He'd missed two opportunities to give McGee a hard time, and had let Tony get away with a six minute phone call that took him away from his desk. No, she decided, whatever it was, it wasn't growing pains. Gibbs wouldn't let anything physical get to him anyway, and besides, he wasn't all that old, come to think of it. Ducky was kinda overdoing it with the aging thing. After all, he was a lot older than Gibbs was, he was probably a little jealous…

"Yeah, okay." Abby shrugged, turned, and started for the door. "You're probably right, I guess I'm just a little paranoid."

"Understandably so," murmured Ducky. "Your affectionate nature is a breath of fresh air, but don't let it get the better of your good judgment. Jethro is perfectly capable, as you and I both well know, of-!"

He was cut off by the sound of the door slamming behind Abby as she left the lab. At the same moment, Palmer let out a triumphant "aha!" from somewhere on the other side of the room. "Got it!" He came back over to Ducky, femur in hand.

As Ducky began to realign the bone on the autopsy table, he leaned confidentially over the corpse, and murmured, "you may be a bit beyond the insignificant emotional concerns of the living, so forgive me for burdening you with mine, but to be perfectly honest, I have a very bad feeling about this."

"The tox screen?" asked Palmer. Ducky shook his head.

":No." He sighed and pulled on a pair of gloves that he'd removed during the search. "Abigail."


	2. Disabused

**Chapter Two – Disabused**

It ended up being pretty easy to justify it to herself. If no one else recognized how upset Gibbs had been all day, then obviously it was up to Abby to make sure that everything was all right. Sure, he seemed like a standoffish sort of man, but Abby knew better. He was way more kind and gentle than anyone else seemed to give him credit for, and she just knew that if only someone actually gave him the opportunity to really let go, it would probably do him a world of good. After all, wasn't he the one that had understood better than even she did that sometimes, you just needed someone to talk to?

The only thing that bothered Abby was the fact that she felt she had to justify it to herself at all. If it was really a good, helpful, noble thing to do, how come she felt like a borderline stalker?

"Forget it, Abby," she said. "You can do this, this is no big deal. You're just visiting a friend. Uninvited. A big, scary friend, who's in a bad mood and carries a gun, but doesn't have to because he could kill you with a look. Right. It's no big deal."

It was late in the evening when she actually managed to build herself up enough to get into her car and pull out of the parking lot. She knew how to get to Gibbs' house, but the nagging little voice in the back of her mind kept distracting her by insisting that she not barge in where her "affectionate nature" might not be appreciated. "Get it together, Abby," she kept saying to herself, "he's always glad to see you, and even if he isn't, it'll give him a chance to let off steam. It's always good to let off steam, it'll make him feel so much better. This is a win-win situation…for everybody except you." The idea of Gibbs letting off steam at her was more unpleasant than she cared to consider.

Maybe it was the inner monologue, or maybe it was the one she was repeating out loud that distracted her from the road enough to make her unaware of the fact that she was coming up on a red light. Still lost in conflicted thought, Abby ran right through the red light, managing somehow to providentially avoid a car crossing in front her. Only then did she realize that something had gone wrong, and, in a desperate effort not to kill the passenger of the next car in the lineup, she swerved abruptly to the right and collided heavily with a large grey truck. She had managed to avoid injuring anyone, but, unluckily for her, the truck was a lot bigger than she was. A general rule of the road that someone had once told her was that if a big car and a small car get into a fight, the big car usually wins, and as the truck smashed against the side of her car, she did the only thing that seemed at all practical in the circumstance. She panicked.

***

It could have turned out a lot worse than it did. Abby walked away with only some bruising, and the driver of the other car appeared to have no visible injuries. Abby's car, however, was not so lucky. The huge dent along the side, bending the car into an unusual shape, as well as the smashed windows indicated that Abby would not be driving away from the scene. The police officer who had answered the frantic 911 call Abby had made shortly after realizing that she wasn't dead shrugged his shoulders unsympathetically at her. "Do you have someone you can call?"

She bit her lip. It was awfully late at night and awfully far away from home for her to call any of her neighbors to come and help her get back to her place. She supposed it might be worth a try, but it was very possible that phones would be off. She thought briefly of McGee, but realized that the idea of spending the night at McGee's place presented a lot of social complications that she wasn't sure she felt like facing after the traumatic experience she'd just had. "Yeah," she told the officer, "okay." She called a number.

The phone rang just the right number of times to give Abby the opportunity to think about hanging up. Then someone picked up on the other end, and Gibbs voice was in her ear. "Yeah, Abby?"

"Um." She fumbled for a good choice of words. "I'm really _really_ sorry to bother you so late like this, I _really_ wouldn't be doing it if I didn't have to, and-!"

"Abby." It was Gibbs' "enough" voice, and Abby stopped apologizing. "Is everything okay? Are you still at the lab?"

"N-no."

"Well." Gibbs was obviously trying not to sound impatient. "Where are you?"

Abby took a deep breath. She told him.

***

"I'm _so_ sorry," she was telling him, as Gibbs used the key on the door to his place and ushered her inside. "This is _really_ unprofessional of me, you're being so good about it, and-!"

"I told you," murmured Gibbs, "to stop apologizing." He gestured to a chair, asking "can I get you something to drink?"

"No, but," Abby was saying, gazing around her at the unfinished boat, the sparse surroundings, a few knickknacks on the table. "You don't understand, I do have to apologize. I've been really stupid today, and Ducky told me not to be, but I didn't listen to him and now you've gotten stuck with me, and that's not the way it was supposed to go at _all_."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow at her. "The way what was supposed to go?"

"Well…" she considered not telling him, or making something up, or even pretending she didn't remember what it was she had started to say in the first place. It would probably be the sensible thing to do to pretend that this entire encounter was really entirely contingent on the coincidental car accident. Instead, when she opened her mouth, the entire story came out in a garbled rush, sounding something like, "I just though you looked so upset today, and I wanted to make sure that you were okay, but Ducky said you were and that I wasn't, but I was worried so I came, but I didn't mean to hit the car and I know this looks like a stupid ploy now and that I'm a very stupid girl, but are you okay?"

Gibbs regarded her for a long moment, apparently trying to decide whether to be exasperated, angry, or amused. Abby felt herself flush under what she was sure was going to be a torrent of reproach, but instead, Gibbs just shook his head and looked away from her, looking for a moment like he was trying to fight off a smile. "Yes, I am," he said. "I'm glad you're not hurt. You can have a few minutes to calm down. When you're feeling better, I'm going to drive you home. Now, can I get you something to drink?"


	3. Disarmed

**Chapter Three – Disarmed**

An hour or so later, Gibbs was watching Abby nurse her fourth cup of coffee. She was looking much better, having apparently made a total recovery from her earlier panic. Her bruising looked minimal, but he had noticed a red scrape where the seatbelt had cut her, just below her collarbone, which was probably the reason she winced a bit whenever she moved her right shoulder. It had stopped bleeding, but it's dull dark red provided a bizarre contrast to the very pale skin of her neck. Maybe it was that jarring image that made him insist that she allow him to bandage it up.

"It really doesn't hurt all that much," Abby insisted, adding "ow!" as Gibbs stretched a gauze pad, and then a thin bandage over the affected area.

Gibbs shook his head. "You don't want to let it get infected," he assured her. "The little scrapes can be more insidious than the more obvious injuries." Stepping back, he examined the bad job he'd done. The supposedly skin-colored bandage didn't match Abby's tone at all, and the result was that she now had a three-color palette playing across her neck. Abby, following the direction of his gaze, ran her fingertips over the bandage.

"Yes sir," she said complacently, sitting back to finish her coffee. "You know best." After a couple of sips, she added, "You've probably had all sorts of harrowing battle scars."

"Yes," agreed Gibbs simply, thinking that the worst battle scars were the ones you couldn't see on the skin. The really insidious ones were never physically manifested. They stuck around in the mind after everything else had closed up and been forgotten as anything other than a glory-giving mark of being a hero.

"But you're still handsome. Handsome in a…rugged sort of way. Not rugged like Harrison Ford rugged, but like…Pierce Brosnan with an edge. Obviously experienced, but mysteriously unchanged. And distinguished." She cocked her head to one side, apparently analyzing his resemblance to various movie stars. Gibbs raised an eyebrow at her, and she made a belligerent face. "Don't try to deny it, I can see you better than you can."

He didn't try it. Instead, he sat in mildly amused silence as Abby prattled on about whether or not he would do better as an action hero, or a romantic lead. "Clint Eastwood," she was saying, "only he's a bit too…craggy."

Gibbs glanced at the clock. It was already almost midnight. "It's getting late," he informed her, "and you're probably tired. We'd better get you home. Finish your coffee." He stood up from the table and headed for the stairs, but Abby's voice recalled him.

"Gibbs, are you sure it's okay?"

He turned to find her wrinkling her brow and watching him with what looked like a cross between trepidation and affectionate concern. Something pulled at his heartstrings, and, not for the first time, considered the fact that she had one of the best, most sincere puppy faces he'd ever seen. She could charm the most cold blooded killer, and, in fact, had once demonstrated this by taming an attack dog that had been a part of an investigation, purely by giving it a little bit of good-old-Abby love.

"Am I sure that what's okay, Abs?"

She made a face. "Don't play dumb, I mean you!" Rising from the table, she came to meet him and put her hand on his sleeve, biting her lip. "You look so…tired. Like, really exhausted."

Gibbs didn't say anything. He was tired, very tired, emotionally tired, physically tired…he needed a break, and there wasn't likely to be one any time soon…if ever. Abby spent a couple of seconds watching his face, and then suddenly threw her arms around him and hugged him, letting out one, long exasperated sigh as she did so. "Oh Gibbs…you're always so mysterious. I know you're not gonna tell me what's wrong, I just…want _you_ to know that _I_ want to know. You know?"

Gibbs smiled. He leaned over to give Abby a kiss on the cheek, and to his surprise he felt her lean eagerly into the kiss, the lashes of her closed eyes brushing against the side of his face. He stiffened and pulled swiftly away, to find her staring at him, a look of horror slowly making it's way over her features. She opened her mouth to say something, closed it again, and then managed to say "oh no," in a very small voice.

The next few moments happened very quickly. As Gibbs' mind reeled with the implications of Abby's reaction to his gesture, Abby herself was trying to push past him to the upstairs landing. He reached out for her arm to hold her back, but she struggled against him. "Abby," he said, trying to sound firm and collected.

She shook her head, not looking at him. "I should go home."

"I'll drive you," Gibbs insisted, but Abby was free now and on her way towards the front door.

"I'll call a taxi," she called back over her shoulder. Opening the door, she was about to make her exit, when she stopped, turned, bit her lip, and murmured "thanks, Gibbs. For the coffee." Then she was gone, and he could hear her feet pounding on the sidewalk outside.

I should have insisted, he thought. It's late, and she's upset now, she'll get into trouble. He started towards the phone, intending to call her and insist that she come back, before realizing that he couldn't insist, she wouldn't come. He'd scared her away with how suddenly he'd rejected her response, and he couldn't take it back just by pretending it hadn't happened. Gibbs had always known that Abby had a bit of a crush on him. The whole team knew, and she'd just been comparing him to Hollywood heartthrobs, for god's sake. It wasn't exactly a well kept secret. What had surprised him was the intensity of her response, the way that he could feel her heart suddenly start to beat faster the moment his lips had made contact. Poor Abby was having some trouble controlling her emotions, and based on her reaction, it seemed as though she hadn't realized the depth of her own feelings on the subject. No, he couldn't call her back. She had enough sense not to come.


	4. Distracted

**Chapter Four - Distracted**

Gibbs knew that the next morning would be inevitably uncomfortable, and he strode into work steeling himself for the unavoidable confrontation between himself and a mortified Abby. At first, everything was status quo. Ziva and McGee were already at their desks, and Tony standing over Ziva's desk, pointing something out on her monitor. As soon as Gibbs came into view, Tony straightened up and shot a glance at his own empty desk.

"Morning, boss," muttered Tony. "I was just-!"

"Yeah, I don't want to know." Gibbs turned to McGee. "What have we got?"

"I've been running our guy's phone records," reported McGee, pulling up a series of highlighted numbers on his own monitor, "and I've got two numbers. This one," he selected one, "is the last one he called, twenty minutes before the time of death. This one," he selected the second number, "was called four times in the past 48 hours."

McGee glanced over at Gibbs, looking hopeful, but Gibbs just raised an eyebrow. "Well?"

"Well, I just finished the phone records, and I haven't figured out who-!" McGee began.

"Then start figuring it out, McGee," Gibbs cut him off. "Now would be good, five minutes ago would've been better."

"On it, boss." McGee buried himself back in his phone records, and Gibbs turned around to find Ziva standing at his elbow. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Ducky has been looking for you," she informed him. "He asked me to let him know when you came in. Should I-?"

"No need." Gibbs started off towards Ducky's lab. "I'll go."

***

Ducky and Palmer were hunched together over the body on the autopsy table, Palmer shining a light on the abdomen, ducky pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. They both looked up as Gibbs came through the door.

"There you are," said Ducky, abandoning the body to join Gibbs at the other end of the room. "I hope I'm not taking you away from something important."

"What have you got for me, Duck?" asked Gibbs. Ducky shook his head.

"Nothing but a question," he replied, shrugging apologetically. "I was wondering if Abby ended up finding you last night."

Gibbs tried very hard not to let his face show how much that question had taken him by surprise. He supposed he should have known that Abby might have called someone else about the accident, maybe before she'd gotten through to him. "Yes," he said hesitantly, "yes she did."

Ducky let out an exasperated sigh. "I told her to be a good girl and leave you alone, but there's nothing to be done with that girl, I suppose. She's absolutely convinced that there's something weighing on your mind, decided that she and she alone could draw you out of yourself enough to get you to open up and divulge your real feelings. You see the problem, there's very little to be said to thwart that kind of an altruistic, if a bit misguided, goal." Shaking his head, Ducky added "I take it that the conversation between the two of you did not play out the way she intended. She looked a bit shell-shocked when I saw her this morning…I hope you weren't too hard on her."

That, thought Gibbs, is really a matter of opinion.

As Ducky saw the closed, distracted look on Gibbs' face, his expression darkened slightly. "You did give her some hard words after all, didn't you? I should have expected it…you've a right to your privacy, Jethro, but there's no need to be so callous…Abigail adores you, and although I know you're fully deserving, sometimes I wonder if you know it. You'd better go down there and smooth things over with her, it'll bother you all day if you don't."

It did bother him all day. For the rest of the day, while he tried vainly to keep his mind fully centered on the various tasks at hand, Gibbs found his thoughts straying repeatedly to images of a tearful Abby hunched over in the back of a cab, or trying to blink back obscuring tears as she leaned over her desk in the laboratory and clicked unhappily through various images of crime scene findings. Once, he nearly sent McGee down to check on her and see if she was doing all right, but found himself unable to foist the disagreeable task on to anybody else. Ultimately, he found his feet carrying him almost against his will through the doorway into Abby's lab.

His fears appeared at first to have been unwarranted. Abby's music was blasting at top volume, her desk complete with more than the sufficient number of caffeinated beverages, and the straw from a Caf-Pow poking into her mouth as she rattled away on the keyboard. He stood behind for at least a full minute before the clacking of the keys stopped, and Abby took her hands off the keyboard long enough to listen to the silence in the room. He saw her body go tense as she became aware of his presence, and, almost unconsciously, he retracted the hand he'd been reaching out to touch her shoulder.

"Gibbs?" Abby didn't turn around when she spoke to him.

He took a step closer to her. "What are you listening to?"

"It's…it's called Calf Decapitation. They're new; I just got their single from my friend. It's…it's pretty good. I don't know if I like all the bass, but the vocals all pretty good."

Gibbs would not have called any part of what was playing through the speakers "vocals." It came to mind that perhaps the band had gotten it's name from the similarity in sound between their music and the screams made by butchered infant cows. "Can I talk to you for a minute?" he asked.

Abby shook her head, still not looking at him. "There's nothing to talk about," she insisted. "You're early. I don't have anything for you. You'll have to come back."

"I'd like to talk to you now," Gibbs insisted gently.

"I'm busy. You're busy,' countered Abby.

"I've got time," pressed Gibbs.

"Yeah, I don't." Abby sounded sharp, a little too sharp for a normal professional conversation. "I'm trying to…I'm just in the middle of something. You'll have to come back," she reiterated.

Gibbs shrugged his shoulders. "Okay," he said. "I will." Leaning in towards her,almost mechanically, he bent as though to give her one of his customary kisses on the cheek, and then suddenly stopped and shook his head, pulling slowly away. Instead, he gave her shoulder a good, firm squeeze. "Keep up the good hard work, Abs."

As he turned to leave, he thought he heard something come out of her that sounded like a cross between a squeak, a choke, and a sniffle. Then the clacking of the keyboard started again, almost double time, and Abby was back at work and seemingly unaware of his presence as he strode from the room.

He felt more like crawling.


	5. Dissatisfied

**Chapter Five: Dissatisfied**

"I gotta ask you a question," announced Abby, walking into the midst of Tony, Ziva, and McGee's desks.

All three of them looked up, and Tony said "if you've got girly problems, ask McGee. Ziva probably won't be much use with that stuff."

Abby ignored him. "Have any of you," she began, "ever told yourself over and over again that you couldn't have something, until you were absolutely convinced that you couldn't have it, and you were okay with that because you just knew that you couldn't have it, and you could deal with not having it…but then you found out that you _really_ couldn't have it, and weren't so okay with it anymore?"

The other three stared at her in blank, bemused silence. "No," said Tony after a moment's lack of consideration, "No, I can't say I've got any idea what the heck you're talking about."

"I'm sorry," said Ziva, "It is probably my English.." She sounded pretty dubious about it.

"Yeah," said McGee, "I know what you mean."

This time, everyone stared at McGee, including Abby. He tried to look innocent and unconcerned. "Probie's got a secret," murmured Tony provocatively, adding "not…that I have any idea what kind of a secret, cause I can't make any sense out of Abby." Leaning in towards McGee, he grinned, and asked "care to enlighten us, McGiggle?"

Turning his back on Tony entirely, McGee faced Abby and shrugged. "You're an optimist. You can't help it. If you want something, you're always gonna want it, and you're always gonna imagine ways of getting it, even if you know you can't. Sometimes it just takes someone else to tell you the truth."

"I don't like the truth," muttered Abby, pouting a bit childishly.

"Doesn't matter," insisted McGee. "It is the way it is. Once you get that, even if you don't like it, it'll feel a lot better."

Ziva and Tony had been watching McGee with interest throughout this whole exchange. Tony reached out to give McGee an unnecessarily vigorous manly backpat, announcing "wise words, very good advice. When did you get so worldly, anyway, Yoda?"

Abby left them to bicker.

***

"But I don't want it to be the truth," she said out loud to herself, sitting alone in the lab while the computer scanned a set of prints found on John Doe's cell phone.

Abby was a practical woman. Once she'd identified the problem, it hadn't taken her long to sort out how she felt about it. She had always admired Gibbs, always thought of him as brave, handsome, distinguished, intelligent, mysterious in a sexy way…the list went on and on. He'd always been unattainable, scintillatingly unattainable, in the way that a movie star or a famous public figure would always be unattainable. Great to look at, fun to fantasize about, never to considered as a legitimate possibility.

The difference this time was that one rarely got very close to a celebrity, never got to joke with them, or learn first hand about what made them happy, or sad, or angry. Gibbs may have once been just a fantasy man, but he had rapidly become a very real and constant part of her life. What was more, he cared about her. She knew he cared about her, because of the way he talked to her, the way he paid more attention to her and cut her more slack than any of the others. She was his favorite, and he'd said it himself on more than one occasion. Or at least, she reminded herself, she had used to be his favorite. After last night, maybe he would start paying more attention to safer members of the team, people who weren't likely to let their unguarded emotions get in the way of important work. Gibbs, thought Abby darkly, had lots of emotions, but no unguarded ones, and he looked down rather severely on anyone who did have them.

And what right did he have to look down on anyone for wanting to show their feelings? It made her just a little bit angry, thinking about all the times they'd cared for him when he'd been in the throes of emotions overpowering enough to make him quit the team, his team, the team that was more like a family to him now than anyone else had ever been or ever would be. What right did he have to assume that it was better to keep yourself from showing the fact that you feel things, when all that had ever gotten him into was trouble? Just because he had the ability to be a dead fish and to push all fo the important stuff to the back of his mind didn't mean that everyone else could, or even should be able to do the same thing.

And yet, none of that changed the fact that he'd made it very clear to her that even her emotional, accidental, involuntarily advances were unwelcome, and that therefore she was unwelcome, and he was as unattainable as the first day she'd decided he was the perfect man.

"But I don't _want_ that to be the truth!" she reiterated, louder, more confidently, as though convincing herself that by asserting it more clearly, she was more likely to get what she wanted.

"Don't want what to be the truth?" asked Gibbs.

Abby jumped. She should have seen it coming, or at least heard the sound of the elevator, but she almost jumped out of her skin nonetheless, lost as she had been in her own self-righteous reflections. Trying to recover herself, she put on the most determined, resilient, commanding face she could muster, and wheeled around in her chair to face Gibbs.

"I want to talk to you," she announced.

Gibbs nodded. "Here I am."


	6. Disillusioned

**Chapter Six - Disillusioned**

"You're not here so I can apologize," announced Abby. "I mean, I am going to apologize, but that's not why you're here. Actually I'm…really sorry that things worked out the way they did, and you really didn't deserve to be taken by surprise like that after you'd been so nice to me, but that's the way it goes and even though I'm apologizing, that doesn't mean I'm sorry. I mean, ashamed. It doesn't mean I'm ashamed."

Gibbs nodded encouragingly, his face impassive except for a raised eyebrow. Abby took a deep breath. She opened her mouth to say something, stop, reconsidered, and closed it again, feeling stupid and small, like she was spewing a lot of words out into nowhere, with no way of determining how Gibbs was taking any of it. Impulsively, she asked, "what do you want me to say?"

Gibbs shrugged. "I don't want you to say anything. You wanted to talk."

"No." Abby wagged a finger at him, shaking her head. "No, that's not how it started. _You_ came to me. _You_ wanted to talk to me. But I don't think you wanted to talk, because you never really want to talk about anything. I think you wanted me to talk, so you could listen and figure out how to get into my head. But," and her voice rose as she gained more and more confidence, "but that's not fair, right? Because I can't get into your head. No one can. No one is ever in your head except you, and I have no idea what kind of mess I'm getting myself into, so I want _you_ to talk to _me._"

She waited. Gibbs said nothing, but was beginning to look very slightly uncomfortable. Abby pushed her advantage.

"You can start by telling me what you want me to say."

Gibbs gazed at her for a long time. She wasn't sure exactly how long it was, but she spent it trying to glean some sort of emotional intercourse from the lack of expression on his face. Finally, carefully, distinctly, Gibbs repeated, "Abby, I don't want you to say anything."

Abby knew what he meant. She knew that it was a harmless comment, a response meant to dissipate the tension, to make her realize that she was entitled to say whatever she wanted, and that she didn't have to be careful just to please him or to spout out whatever it was that he wanted to hear. By now, however, she was on a roll, and every word he said seemed to add more weight to the argument she was rapidly formulating in her frustrated brain. "You see?" she asked, more accusatorily than she had intended. "You That's the problem. You don't want me to say anything at all. You'd rather have it all just go away, you'd probably rather have me just go away, because that's easier than trying to figure out what it all means."

This time, Gibbs spoke up almost immediately, quietly, not taking his eyes of Abby as he assured her, "I don't want you to go away."

As soon as she met his eyes, the fight went out of Abby almost entirely. It would have been different if Gibbs had just been trying to placate her, or if he'd blown her off and had been attempting to minimize her concerns the way she'd told herself he would. The sincerity and focus of a man she admired in so many more ways than one was a little more than she found herself able to take, and her arguments melted away into incoherent guck in the face of what certainly looked, at that moment, like real concern.

"What I want," Gibbs continued steadily, "is for you to feel comfortable with this situation, and for you to know that you'll always be welcome here, and that you'll always be wanted here in spite of…" he trailed off, "in spite of any complications that may have arisen last night."

"In spite of," muttered Abby. For some reason, it didn't feel like what she wanted to hear.

Gibbs insisted, "I care about you Abby."

"How?" Abby implored him, and now she was the one with the intense look on her face.

"We all care about you," said Gibbs. "Tony, and Ziva, and McGee, and Ducky, and-!"

"I don't want you to care about me the way they care about me," insisted Abby.

"You'll always be a favorite of mine," Gibbs was continuing, inexorably, but still gently. "I've always been fond of you."

Abby stared at the floor, lost in thought. When she spoke, it wasn't to Gibbs, but to herself, out loud, as she tried to organize her thoughts into some semblance of order. "It all means the same thing," she muttered, "and none of it means anything. I used to think it meant something, I used to be 'fond' of you, and want you to 'care' about me, but now it doesn't mean anything to me. I don't think it means anything to you, either."

Gibbs had become impassive again. He shook his head. "You're not making sense now, Abby. You're not really thinking about things properly. I'm telling you that nothing has changed between us. Everything is going to be just fine. You're a member of my team, and you always will be. Everything's okay."

"Yeah," muttered Abby, "I know that's what you said."

Gibbs reached an arm out towards Abby, presumably to give her one of his firm hugs. The distress in Abby's mind made the idea of being close to someone who had always been so comforting to her very appealing, and she let him envelop her, even though it was technically he who was causing her all of the trouble in the first place. She let him hold her for a moment, burying her head in his shoulder as though she was enjoying his protection from some outside demon, pretending for a moment that Gibbs would be able to sweep in, playing the knight in shining armor and keep any unpleasantness at bay for as long as it took.

That wasn't how it was going to work this time. There was no monster outside, no faceless enemy whose identity Gibbs would determine just in time to shield her from the pain. This time, it was up to Abby to shield herself…or maybe not to. Impulsively and yet decisively, she craned her neck and kissed him, not on the cheek, but full on the mouth. He was startled enough not to pull away from her for a moment, and she had a couple seconds of getting to feel the connection between the two of them. Then Gibbs pulled his head away, the contact was broken, and she was left staring at his blank, inscrutable expression. He seemed pretty shocked, and Abby had to gently pry his arms loose from around her in order to free herself from his embrace. She didn't even look back at him as she walked out of the room, one thought running through her head on a sickeningly continuous loop.

It hadn't felt right, she told herself. It hadn't felt the way it been supposed to feel at all.


	7. Disingenuous

**Author's Note: **This chapter, in which Gibbs "gets over himself" is for **deidi**. Thanks for reading and for reviewing!

All the best,

Vivian

**Chapter Seven: Disingenuous**

"Boss? Are you wearing lipstick?"

Gibbs, seated at his desk, groaned inwardly. Leave it to Tony to be dense as a post until it came to noticing details that had anything to do with the traces of a woman. Resisting his first urge to scrub madly at his face with his hand, Gibbs didn't even turn around.

"That's certainly a new way of getting out of doing work, Tony," remarked Ziva with amusement in her voice. "Accusing Gibbs of being a cross dresser. Creative, but risky."

"Well, you know me," grinned Tony, puffing his chest out and leaning back to place his hands behind his head. "I like to walk on the wild side."

Gibbs turned around to fix Tony with the kind of impassive, unimpressed glare that he hoped would distract Tony entirely from the lipstick smudges across the lower part of his mouth. It worked. Immediately becoming more interested in the papers lying on his own desk, Tony quickly and obediently returned to the task at hand.

It was several more minutes before Gibbs became aware that there were still eyes on the back of his head. Expecting to see Tony preparing to make another crack, he spun around, only to find McGee gawking at him with partially open mouth from a couple of desks away. Gibbs raised an eyebrow at him, but it was several moments before McGee found the words to say what it was that was obviously on his mind.

"That's…Abby's lipstick," he finally said, more and more wide-eyed the better he could see Gibbs' face. "That's the lipstick Abby was wearing this morning."

It would have been a wonderful opportunity for Tony, or even for Ziva, though Gibbs, to have gotten on McGee's case for spending too much time staring at Abby, or for having an unmanly interest in lipstick brands. Unluckily, neither of the two field agents made a sound. Instead, all three of the members of his team continued to stare at Gibbs with varying degrees of disbelief, horror, and scintillated interest on their faces, until he was forced to break the silence.

"Yeah," he said, sounding more nonchalant than he'd thought he could under the circumstances, "Abby got…a little excited this morning. Seems she's been having some computer trouble today, and I was unfortunate enough to walk in while she was rejoicing in having finally successfully outsmarted the virus that was preventing her from focusing. Next time, I'm going to send McGee."

ZIva laughed, and lost interest. Tony, looking only slightly disappointed, muttered "Probie would just love that," and returned reluctantly to his work. McGee, on the other hand, steadily met Gibbs' eyes, his expression passing from shock into something just short of betrayal. He probably knew that Abby had not been having any computer trouble.

He knew that he ought to feel guilty. After it all, it was, and had been for some time, common knowledge that McGee had feelings for Abby far exceeding those involved in the normal, friendly co-worker relationship. It was so obvious that Gibbs strongly suspected that McGee had given up any hope of trying to hide those feelings, and perhaps he did so to make everyone else aware that the Abby game was ultimately his to win. Gibbs had always kept the knowledge of McGee's preference at the very back of his mind, assuming that both McGee and Abby were capable of keeping themselves under control enough not to let it get in the way of their working relationship. About McGee, at least, he seemed to have been right.

Why was it, then, that he didn't feel guilty? Then again, what, if anything, did he have to feel guilty about? He hadn't invited it, hadn't asked for Abby to suddenly develop feelings for him and to decide it was time to act upon them. Then again, it hadn't been sudden at all. Both Gibbs and Abby had known for some time that Abby nearly worshipped Gibbs, and it had been flattering, even fun to think of himself as being a hero in her eyes. The only thing he was really ashamed of was letting the seduction of her feelings for him make him feel all the more powerful, something, he told himself, that a man of his age and experience should have been able to ward off or at least ignore. For a moment, he was prepared to believe that it was conceit on his part; simple, if not particularly admirable.

Upon honest reflection, however, Gibbs knew that it hadn't just been conceit. He hadn't just been flattered, he'd been deeply moved, regularly buoyed up by the idea that Abby Sciuto was helplessly attracted to him. It wasn't a question of flattery, or of being delighted that a woman found him interesting. It was Abby, and Abby alone whose attentions had made him feel like a stronger person. Sincere feeling of that kind was more dangerous than any unwanted arrogance could ever have been, and he found himself unable to be relieved by the idea that he was more of a man than he'd given himself credit for only a moment ago.

It wasn't that he had ever thought of her as a woman. He hadn't allowed himself any liberties of the kind. Only in the back of his mind, in the uncontrollable subconscious, something about Abby had always made him feel wonderful. Coming down to her lab had been the high point of his day for longer than he could clearly remember, and he allowed himself only rare visits in order to make the experience all the more refreshing and rejuvenating.

The more he thought about it, the more Gibbs realized how much he wanted to return to the lab at this moment. The relief that he felt every time he walked in to see her hunched over her computer, lost in brow-wrinkling, frustrated contemplation, was just what he needed at this moment to clear his head. Gibbs couldn't feel guilty, because he was just on the cusp of beginning to understand that he didn't have a choice as to whether or not he did or did not work well alongside Abby from this point on. He couldn't work without her, couldn't even do his job without her presence in his sphere.

"Forgive me for allowing myself a personal question, but…Jethro, is that lipstick on your mouth?"

Ducky had come up behind Gibbs during Gibbs' moment of revelation, and now the Doctor was peering down through his glasses with a more and more disapproving look on his face. Ah, thought Gibbs, reaching across his desk for a tissue. Lost in pleasurable realizations, he'd forgotten to wipe the makeup off.


	8. Disentangled

**Chapter Eight – Disentangled**

The twenty four hours between Gibbs' realization of his own budding feelings, and his next encounter with Abby felt more to him like months. He'd been unable to sleep all that night, unable to shake the image of the dazedly delighted look that would cross her face when she heard him admit it for the first time. No amount of mental discipline could keep his body from feeling the phantom pressure of her frame against his, the way it had felt for a few moments when he'd embraced her in the lab the day before.

When he walked into the office the next morning, Gibbs didn't bother to hide the spring in his step. Tony, Ziva, and McGee also did not bother to pretend to work, but instead watched with trepidation and fascination as he went straight past them to descend to Abby's lab. He'd trained his crack team to be always vigilant and exceptionally observant, and there was no chance that they hadn't picked up on the fact that something was, at least, decidedly out of the ordinary between himself and the forensic specialist. Oddly enough, he couldn't even care. Sooner or later they'd have to know, whether they figured it out on their own or not. He would climb that mountain when he got to it.

He was only mildly disappointed when he didn't find Abby in her lab. She'd probably stepped out to get something to eat, or to talk to Ducky and Palmer. Even after close to a half an hour had passed, Gibbs wasn't exactly worried. The professional instincts he couldn't entirely turn off reminded him that both he and Abby should be, whenever possible, at their workstations, and both she and himself were wasting precious minutes of what could have been a useful workday. After nearly an hour had passed, however, he finally did begin to wonder.

Returning to the elevator, he pushed the up button, waiting for the doors to open. When they did, Abby was standing in the elevator, looking expectantly at him. "I have been in here," she said, "for an hour. What took you so long, Gibbs? Busy morning?"

All Gibbs managed to say in return was, "I expected you to be at your desk, Abs. Where you belong."

Abby shrugged apologetically. "Don't be mad," she said. "I've been looking forward all morning to talking to you. I've got something that you're really going to be glad to hear. Took me all night to figure it out, but I have it."

Stepping into the elevator, Gibbs let it rise for a few moments before pushing the button to shut it down. Abby looked around and bit her lip, then turned back to Gibbs and took her customary deep breath. "Okay," she said. "This time you're here for me to apologize."

"There's nothing for you to apologize for," Gibbs began, ready to pour all the warmth he could muster into his tone. Abby cut him off with a vigorous shake of the head.

"No," she rushed on, "no, you're sweet, but I do have to apologize. I've…I've made you go through all this for nothing. You could have fired me, you could have told about me to everyone on the team and made me look like a stupid little girl, but you didn't, and I want you to know that I appreciate that…and I'm really sorry. I don't think…I don't think we'll ever have to talk about it again, after this, I mean. I've got everything straight in my head this time. For good."

Something started to churn in the pit of Gibbs' stomach, and his heart began to sink inexplicably lower in his chest as he raised an eyebrow at her and asked "Why's that?"

"Well." Abby smiled, a genuine, radiant, Abigail Sciuto smile. "All last night, on the ride home, and once I was back at my place, I tried to figure out what was wrong. I mean…when I, like, kissed you," she blushed a little bit, and tried valiantly not to show, "it didn't feel right. You're supposed to get butterflies and crazy feelings, and your head's supposed to get all light, and your legs get wobbly and…but you know all about that, you've been…you've been with women before. Anyway, when I kissed you, and it didn't feel like that at all, I started to wonder why it didn't. I mean, why I wasn't like a silly schoolgirl anymore."

Come to think of it, Gibbs told himself, he remembered having felt that wobbly-kneed, light-headed feeling very distinctly. Strange that he hadn't noticed it at the time…or at least hadn't been able to identify it.

"And then," Abby rushed on, "suddenly, it came to me. I just…figured it out. In a flash. Like that." She snapped her fingers together for emphasis. "I'm crazy about you, like…like the second extra dad I've never had, the cool dad, who manages to reprimand me and make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside at the same time. I only thought that it was more than that, because…because I like you so much, and because I'm so close to you, and I've never had that before with anyone who wasn't in my immediate family. I mean, I get close to people all the time, but not like this. This time it's different, it's special, it's like we're made for each other in some sort of perfect, undamagable way, like we've always been family even before we knew each other." She beamed at him. "So of course, when I kissed you yesterday, it felt like…like I was kissing my dad. Of course that's weird. It's supposed to be weird, to make you…you know, not do it. Cause that's…gross. But you're not gross. I mean, it would be gross if you were my dad. But you're not. It just feels like…you know what I mean."

Gibbs was forced to admit to himself that he did, in fact, know what she meant. He did not, however, have or intend to admit that he liked it. All of the trepidation, all of the desperation and the confusion had vanished during that period the night before when he'd realized how excited he was just to be able to tell her that he felt the same way, whatever that way was, and to see the elated look that he was sure would appear on her face. Being that eager to have her smile at him, because of something that he said surely meant something, and even if he didn't know exactly what it was, one thing was for sure. He could no longer assure Abby that he felt the same way, because now he knew that he didn't. He had felt a spark for the first time that she somehow hadn't managed to feel, despite all the dramatic nonsense that had taken place in the previous few days.

"See?" Abby said, squeezing his arm as she smiled into his bewildered face. "Everything can go back to being the way it was…if you'll forgive me."

Somehow, Gibbs managed to smile. He grasped her hand for a moment, murmuring, "I said it before, Abs. There's nothing to forgive."

The first time he'd said it, he'd meant it. Now, it turned out to be a lie after all.

**Author's Note: Yeah, you hate me right now. That's okay. Interested in a more satisfying resolution? Well, I'm not promising anything, but stay tuned for the sequel to this fic, which, with any luck, will bring these two a little more solidly and more closely together, probably with a little bit of help from their less fickle and more discerning friends. If you have been reading and/or reviewing, thanks very much for your support so far! It won't be a long hiatus at all.**

**Unanswered questions? The title of this fic comes from a James Taylor song, "Fire and Rain," which contains the lyric "Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground." Somehow, both Abby's shattered hero worship, and Gibb's sudden and thwarted affections seem to correspond nicely with that line. If you don't know it, you should look it up. Great song. **


End file.
